Malaysia film awards shift to digital screening platform

The National Film Development Corporation Malaysia has adopted Silver Trak Digital's Media Room for Festival Filem Malaysia Ke-35, moving film submission management, screening and jury evaluation on to a centralised digital platform.

The system went live in less than two working days for the national film awards programme, which involved more than 80 titles across four categories and about 70 judges and administrators during the assessment period.

FINAS had previously relied largely on manual processes to handle submissions and screenings. Under the new setup, administrators can organise content, assign films to jury members and monitor screening progress through a single dashboard.

The platform also gives organisers visibility into jury viewing activity, including engagement and how much of each film has been watched. This allows staff to see which entries have been assessed, which jury members are still completing their allocations and where screenings have stalled, without relying on email chains, spreadsheets or follow-up calls.

Festival workflow

Festival Filem Malaysia is Malaysia's main film industry awards event. Its 35th edition covered feature films, short films, documentaries and posters.

Noorzillawati Yahya, Chairperson of the FFM35 Participation and Judging Committee at FINAS, said the scale of the awards created operational pressure as submissions arrived from many producers on different timelines.

"The scale of a festival like FFM35 creates a genuine administrative challenge, particularly when submissions arrive from many producers on different timelines," said Noorzillawati Yahya, Chairperson of the FFM35 Participation and Judging Committee at FINAS. "Media Room gives us one place to manage content securely and understand exactly where every submission sits in the assessment process. It has changed how we run screening administration."

For FINAS, the shift reflects a broader move away from physical and manual handling of screeners. The platform is intended to reduce the need for hard disk purchases, storage, manual processing and less secure online viewing arrangements.

Producers submit films through a controlled system designed to protect unreleased content, according to Silver Trak Digital. The service includes digital rights management, recipient watermarking, user access controls and secure screener sharing, allowing any leaked file to be traced back to the recipient.

This is particularly relevant for festival submissions, where producers may need to share unreleased feature films with judges or organisers while limiting risk to a later commercial release. The platform also allows producers to attach metadata tailored to an event's submission requirements, so entries arrive with supporting information already included.

Cost and control

Silver Trak Digital said a recurring issue for producers is the time and expense involved in storage, file access and the delivery of physical drives. It argues that moving those workflows into a digital system can reduce administrative effort and operating costs.

Karlz Varma, Vice President of Business Development at Silver Trak Digital Asia, said the company had heard consistent concerns from producers about content operations.

"One of the challenges we continue to hear from producers is the time and cost involved in managing day-to-day content operations, from storage and quick access to files to the purchase, handling and delivery of physical hard drives. With Media Room, our goal is to simplify these workflows, reduce operational costs and improve accessibility without compromising content security. Producers should feel confident sharing their valuable intellectual property even before release, whether for festival screenings or with potential acquisition buyers. With detailed viewer analytics, they can also understand how buyers engage with their content, helping them make more informed distribution and monetisation decisions," said Varma.

Beyond the awards process, the platform can also be used by producers and distributors to make content available to authorised buyers, distributors and acquisitions teams in other markets. Silver Trak Digital said viewing analytics can show how those parties engage with a title, giving content owners more information about audience interest during sales discussions.

FINAS and Silver Trak Digital are also exploring whether similar digital workflows could be introduced into Wajib Tayang, the screening framework used within the Malaysian exhibition system, as well as other FINAS activities. Such a move would further reduce the use of physical media and manual administration across parts of the organisation's work.

Varma added: "Put simply, we grow as you grow."